Why Your Pet's Pain Matters — and What You Can Do About It

As a veterinarian, I have pledged my life to fighting pain and suffering in animals. Of all the advances I’ve seen, embraced and promoted in more than three decades of practice, none is more important to me than the change of opinion toward pain in veterinary medicine and our increased ability to identify and fight pain in our patients.

And while you might think stopping pain is all about compassion, there’s actually more to it. Keeping animals pain-free is, in fact, good medicine.

The Healing Advantage

Treating pain doesn't just make the hurting stop: It also promotes healthy healing. Untreated pain slows healing time, interferes with sleep and depresses the immune system. Proper treatment of pain improves respiration, shortens postsurgical hospitalization times and improves mobility. It has also been shown to decrease the spread of cancer in postsurgical mice.

Most veterinarians prescribe pain medication when needed, which is a shift from the days when it was standard to think pain was good for animals in some situations. The idea was that an animal who is in pain will move around less during recovery from surgery or injury, a belief largely discarded after studies showed otherwise.

Most veterinarians are now solidly on board when it comes to fighting pain. But some pet owners, sadly, are still not.

While, of course, euthanasia is the gift we give to pets who no longer can be treated, it pains us veterinarians when people don’t make use of proven strategies and medications — which can be very low risk if managed properly — to alleviate their pets' pain. This type of pain management includes NSAIDs, which frighten many pet owners, but that's only part of the picture.

NCSU’s Drs. Denis Marcellin-Little and John Innes argued strongly that one of the most effective tools against arthritis pain in pets is weight loss. Keeping animals at or slightly below their ideal weight is a complete no-brainer: It’s proven to alleviate pain and is extremely cost-effective as well.

Maintaining your pet’s proper weight and using supplements such as glucosamine, chondroitin and omega 3 oils as your veterinarian advises can delay or reduce the need for prescription pain medications. Complementary and alternative medicine such as acupuncture may also be useful pain management tools.